Annoying Orange: Kitchen Carnage

Hey Apple. Hey Apple. Hey Apple...knife.

These days, it seems like everyone has a video game, even the Annoying Orange. Bottle Rocket just released an App based on the impressively popular web series, and it's quite entertaining, especially if you're one of the millions of folks who enjoy watching the creepy and downright irritating orange harass his fruity friends. Oh, and one more thing. Knife!

Kitchen Carnage tasks you with flinging fruit into blenders within a set time while the Annoying Orange provides commentary. The goal is to not only score tons of points, but also move up a level, which grants access to different types of fruit and bigger scoring opportunities.

The blenders will be your primary focus, but the game has other points of interest. Tossing a piece of fruit onto a cutting board, for example, will result in its grisly demise via knife, while chucking it towards the stove (not easy to do) will pad your total.

Through it all, the Annoying Orange has some choice lines, like "Hey, you're an apple", and "What's wrong banana? You don't look like you're peeling very well." Bottom line, it makes sense if you've seen the show.

For the most part, Kitchen Carnage justifies its $0.99 asking price, with fast-paced and addictive play. It definitely has that "one more try" appeal.

That said, judging distances can be difficult. It's a 2D game that makes you think in 3D, and that's a tough concept to understand when a swipe that feels good results in the fruit failing to reach the intended target.

On top of that, we wish there were more chances to extend the constantly ticking clock. Shaking the iPhone at specific points will result in a cabinet door opening, where landing some fruit inside will add precious seconds to the timer, but doing this takes a decent amount of skill, largely because of the distance issue we just mentioned. Even if you reach the cabinet, odds are good that the fruit will ricochet off some plates.

Then we have the Annoying Orange. If anything, he doesn't talk enough. Most times, he just sits there watching the action unfold, occasionally offering encouragement or heckling a friend, but those quips are few and far between. We suspect this has more to do with his inability to keep up with our finger swipes.

Finally, the App Store page says the game has 20 achievements and three leaderboards, but we haven't been able to locate them within the App. Either we missed something, or the developers still have work to do.

Issues aside, Kitchen Carnage is well worth a buck. Bottle Rocket not only captured the spirit of the show, but also designed a cool game with potential, providing the developers come through with the promised new updates and horrible deaths. Now excuse us while we dig for those leaderboards.